Glory is our aim not money says Tom Wood

TOM WOOD made his England debut in Cardiff two years ago, so he knows exactly what it takes to prevail at the Millennium stadium.

Tom Wood is confident this rebuilt England team can overcome Wales in the Millennium Stadium

Today, he is back there in the match to decide the RBS Six Nations.

But now Wales, the defending champions, face an England transformed not only in personnel, but in attitude and public perception from the happy evening when Wood’s Test career began.

That team went on to ignominy at the 2011 World Cup and it is fair to say Wood was one of the less-experienced players in New Zealand least impressed with how their seniors conducted themselves.

If he was one of the most strident voices to be found in the leaked player responses to that baleful experience, who could blame him?

These days he is perfectly positioned to warn the rising generation of the folly of the lax behaviour that he unavoidably witnessed.

Except they evidently need no warning. They may be on course for a £25,000 Grand Slam bonus each on top of their £15,000 match fees, but Stuart Lancaster’s players are actually motivated by nothing more than honour and glory, in that order.

It has shown in their response each time they have faced serious adversity, as they may again against a Welsh side themselves requiring no more than an eight-point win to snatch the title from the leaders.

“We’ve been in some tough challenges already,” said Wood.

“We’ve had a lot of questions asked of us, out in South Africa last summer and throughout the autumn series when things didn’t go quite so well.

“We have always risen to it. What gives us confidence as a team is that character whenever we’ve had our backs against the wall, or tough questions have been asked, we’ve always come out fighting.

“I’m not saying it’s all been perfect. We’ve made mistakes along the way. But we give ourselves a chance by the way we play for each other and the determination within the group.”

These are not the statements of the obvious they may seem, not when you remember how England returned from the World Cup in disarray, or “in the gutter” as forward-coach Graham Rowntree put it.

That was 17 months ago. For a rebuilt team already to be four-fifths of the way to a first English Grand Slam since 2003 – since when Wales have done it three times – is made the more remarkable by the way in which Lancaster has made them humbly reconnect with their own people.

Tom Wood, left, remains one of the few current England players that featured in the 2011 World Cup

We have always risen to it. What gives us confidence as a team is that character whenever we’ve had our backs against the wall

Tom Wood

That is why the head coach could say on Thursday that the payday in the offing was so far from anyone’s thoughts it had never been mentioned. Much more pertinent is finding a way to break down the most parsimonious defence in the Six Nations.

England’s has been decent enough, with four tries conceded, but Wales have given up only three and the last of those was scored just after half-time by Brian O’Driscoll for Ireland in the very first match.

Wood said: “The bigger the game, the simpler the gameplan. You don’t have to solve all the problems early on, become individual and do something special. We need to get the detail right and we think we will be in with a chance because of that. You have to judge games on their merit. I’m open to advice, but you make your own path.”

We will see how simple it is to adopt the back-rower’s kind of approach amid the mayhem. England hope they got their latest imperfection out of the way in scraping past Italy last Sunday after Wales had won in Scotland. Each is as hard to beat as the other.

This is why this great finale is in the balance. Wales’s experience ought to give them an advantage but, as Lancaster pointed out, experience did nothing for the All Blacks when they lost by a record score at Twickenham just three months ago.

England have never lost away from Twickenham under Lancaster and the simple fact that they went to Dublin last month and won in such foul conditions is enough to say they are capable of a repeat in the meteorological vacuum under the Millennium roof.

But Wales have become almost impossible to break down through the middle and as England have been finding it equally impossible to get the ball wider than Manu Tuilagi in attack, the best estimate has to be Wales by a whisker and to do so as the Six Nations runners-up.